St Peter’s Church and Sir Bevis of Hampton.

You may have noticed that the tower of St Peter’s Church is adorned around with a series of carvings of a variety of figures, some human, some animal. They are characters from the medieval legend of Sir Bevis of Hampton – i.e. of Southampton. Bevois Valley, south of Portswood, is named after him. The legend is long and complicated and if you want to know the details you can find them at https://historicsouthampton.co.uk/bevis/

 Meanwhile, it is not too difficult to match up the characters in the legend with the figures on the tower.

For a start, there’s Sir Bevis himself :   

And his horse Arondel :  

  

 

And the twins :  

and the boar :      and the lion :  

However, one of the figures is commonly said to be a character not from the Legend of Sir Bevis but rather from the local Curdridge ledgend of Kitty Knocks :

   This story tells of a young woman who drowned one night on Kitnocks Hill while trying to elope. I have written about this affair previously in the Parish News (see: https://bundellbros.co.uk/kevansmiscellany/category/kitnocks-kitty-nocks-curdridge-witch). I have even written a song about it, which you can listen to at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyeD8Jf4KSU

The question is, who was this character actually intended to be when they built the tower ? Was it meant to be Kitty Nocks, or was it meant to be another character from the Sir Bevis legend – Princess Josian, for example, Sir Bevis’s girlfriend ? In order to try and settle the matter, I headed off to the Hampshire Records Office in Winchester.

I found the papers – letters, documents, plans – relating to the building of St Peter’s Church in 1887. Unfortunately they had nothing to say about the tower, or its inhabitants.

It turns out that the tower was built some seven years later than the church itself – and there are no papers at all in the Records Office relating to the tower.

The mystery remains then. Is it Kitty Knocks, or is it not ?

Kevan Bundell – www.bundellbros.co.uk

Shawford’s Lake, Curdridge

It has long been a puzzle to me why the stream which runs by Lake Road/ Silverlake, through Kitnocks Gully and down through Fairthorne Manor to the Hamble, is called Shawford’s Lake. It is in fact a perennial stream of very modest dimensions. It’s certainly nothing like a lake.

But it’s not the only local stream that’s called a lake – there’s also Ford Lake which joins the Hamble at the junction of Wangfield Lane and Maddoxford Lane; and there’s Posbrook Lake which joins at the old slipway on Church Lane in Botley. Just before the Hamble joins the Solent, there’s a tributary called Hook Lake.

Some while ago, I happened to be perusing the Ordnance Survey map of the Solent. I noticed that many of the tidal channels in Portsmouth, Langstone and Chichester Harbours, are called lakes. The main channel of Portsmouth Harbour is fed, for example, by Fareham, Porchester, Spider and Bombketch Lakes. Langstone Harbour is similarly blessed with Broad, Russell’s and Sinah Lakes.

There was obviously a mystery here to be explored.

I consulted my friend David Chun, expert on and author of The River Hamble: A History.  It seems that the word lake has two different etymological origins. On the one hand, our usual and modern word lake comes, via French, from Latin lacus, meaning a lake, basin or tank. There is no suggestion there of a stream. However, the now dialect word used for our tributary streams and channels comes from Germanic Anglo Saxon lacu, meaning lake, pool and also stream. These words are of quite separate origin, but, unsurprisingly, they have become, over time, conflated and confused.

Puzzle solved.

However, another puzzle remains. Silverlake – which is not obviously silver nor a lake – derives its name from Anglo-Saxon Sulaford, which means ford of/at the boggy place. It was a ford on the important road from Botley, through Curdridge, to Shedfield and on to Wickham – before it was bridged – or rather, culverted. As Anglo-Saxon gave way to Middle and so to Modern English, Sula became silver and ford was replaced with lake, referring to the stream. But then how, why and when did it then become Shawford’s Lake ?


Kevan Bundell

www.kevanbundell.co.uk

 

The history of Tanglewood

With the arrival of the modern Land Registry, old title deeds have become superfluous and are often simply thrown away when properties come to be sold. Fortunately, our solicitor saved the deeds for us when we moved into Tanglewood and I spent several weeks’ worth of winter evenings trying to unravel the history of the house and its land.

The older papers ‑ the earliest dated 5th July 1853 ‑ are beautifully handwritten documents on thick waxed paper with elaborately scripted titles. Two are written on printed engrossment paper and are sealed at the bottom with wax. From 1925, however, the papers are typed and full of errors and obvious failures to understand what was being copied. The art and experience of the legal clerk had gone.

Among the documents is an “Abstract of Title”, dated 6th August 1883. It begins with a summary of the Will of the 15th March 1862 of one William Camper, concerning, “All those two cottages and premises then lately erected and built by him … with the land and farm buildings thereon and adjoining thereto”. The original building was it seems a pair of two up two down “cottages”, both since substantially extended, one of which, has now become Tanglewood.

“William Camper of Gosport in the parish of Alverstoke in the County of Southampton, Shipbuilder” was one of the founders of the now world-famous yacht-builders firm of Camper and Nicholsons, still based in Gosport. In 1809 the young William Camper was apprenticed for a period of seven years to Francis Amos, a former ferry‑man between Gosport and Portsmouth who had turned to boat building near the ferry steps in 1783. At the age of about thirty‑five Camper took over the shipyard, presumably on the death of Amos, and in the following years built up with his partner Benjamin Nicholson, such a profitable business that he not only became wealthy but also earned himself the status of “Gentry” in the local Post Office Directory.

He seems to have bought the plot of land which has now become Tanglewood in about 1857 and he must have had the cottages built sometime between then and March 1862, the date of his Will. He also seems to have had built a couple of other properties nearby, further along the lane, including a modest Victorian villa which is still called “Camper House”.

When William Camper died in 1863 the land and cottages went to his daughter Mary. Unfortunately, things then appear not to have gone well. Between 1872 and 1883, when Mary died, “various dealings” with a number of individuals resulted in the ownership of the property being divided into three shares, two owned by two of Mary’s four sons and one by a Henry Morton Cotton. It looks as though the other two brothers, and possibly Mary’s second husband, John Earl, had used their shares to raise loans which they failed to repay.

Given this situation the two remaining brothers presumably had no choice but to sell the property. It was sold on the 6th August 1883 to Robert Anthony Burrell of Fairthorne and Augusta Burrell, Spinster, his sister, for the sum of £850.

The Burrells were from a wealthy mine‑owning family from Durham and had come down in 1878 and bought the 120 acre Fairthorne Estate, one boundary of which lay adjacent or close to Camper’s land. There is no record of what they did with the cottages and land but it may have been used to house some of the estate staff. Other houses nearby were especially built by Augusta Burrell for this purpose.

Robert Burrell died in 1910 and his sister, after a long life of local philanthropy, died in 1924. In 1925 the Fairthorne estate was sold by Augusta Burrell’s executors. What had been Camper’s cottages and land was sold to one George William Jupe, Farmer, on the 16th September of that year, for the sum of £1,250. In fact, George Jupe had already been occupying the cottage and land since the 1900’s. This is not stated in the documents, but Alf Mears, who was born in one of the Fairthorne staff cottages in 1912 and then lived in another, told me that it was certainly the case. At one time, said Mr Mears, Jupe courted his Aunt, but nothing came of it and Jupe remained a bachelor. He lived in the cottage with a housekeeper, who kept a small shop in the front room, and her daughter.

What Mr Mears did not know, but the documents reveal, is that in order to buy the property Mr Jupe had borrowed a substantial sum of money. On the day after the sale he mortgaged the entire property to one Allan Bowes Wilson of Hutton Rudby, Yorks, for £1000. Wilson was clearly a relative ‑ perhaps the father or brother ‑ of Augusta Burrell’s solictor John George Wilson of the Durham firm of Wilson, Ornsby and Cadle. Unfortunately, it seems that Jupe was never able to repay the loan. Mr Mears recalls that some time before the war Jupe moved out of the cottage and went to live in a shack on another piece of land that he owned or rented in the village. When I told Mr Mears about the mortgage and how much Jupe had paid for the property he replied that Jupe had been a fool and the property never worth so much.

Jupe must have moved out within a few years because by 1930 the cottage and land were occupied and run as a smallholding by William George and Dorothy Rose Pink. It was during this time that the property at last acquired a name. Although the property had become known informally as Pink’s Farm, when the registration of smallholdings was required, it was named “Field View”, borrowing the already existing name of the other half of the cottage.

The Pinks remained in Field View until 1971, a year or two after William Pink had died, and the following year Edmund Luxmore, the final heir to the Jupe mortgage, sold the property to our immediate predecessors, who both modernised and extended the house and gave it the name “Tanglewood”.

The deeds of the property now end with some papers relating to our purchase of Tanglewood in the summer of 1993, taking us to modern times. As mentioned earlier, the oldest document dates to 1853, so the deeds now cover one hundred and forty years of our home’s history. However, after some time and study I discovered that the deeds actually take us a great deal further back than the 1850’s – as far back, in fact, as the fourteenth century.

The fields which are now Tanglewood were formerly part of the lands of Bishops Waltham Manor. In 1925, the same year that George Jupe purchased the property from the Fairthorne Estate, the copyhold rights of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, “Lords of the said Manor of Bishops Waltham”, were “enfranchised and conveyed ……. in fee simple as freehold henceforth and for ever discharged from all fines quit rents heriots and other incidents of copyhold tenure”. In other words, the land became freehold and the Manor’s rights over the property were abolished. Prior to that, however, whenever the property was sold the new owner had to be ‘admitted’ by the payment of a ‘fine’ to the court of the Manor. Among the papers we inherited with the house and land is a copy of a document giving such admission, with the original dated November 1864. The document lists and describes not only Tanglewood but also other adjacent and nearby plots of land. The description of one of these reads as follows:

“…. by estimation ten acres of land now called Outlands formerly Isold in the tithing of Curdridge in six closes now divided under the yearly rent of 1s being late parcel of one messuage and one yard of Boudland and one toft and half a yard of Boudland formerly Isold at Park and other premises ….”

The word “Isold” was a puzzle to me. The other unfamiliar words were in the dictionary ‑ a messuage is a dwelling with its outbuildings and attached land; a toft is a dwelling with attached rights to use common land and “Boudland” is presumably “bondland”, a holding where the tenant was obliged to render some kind of services at harvest and at ploughing time to the Lord of the Manor. “Isold”, however, was not in the dictionary.

At first sight, except for the capitals, it appeared to be a verb ‑ something which had happened or been done to the land ‑ but without knowing what it might mean I had some doubt. It was only when my neighbour, a local historian, handed me a copy of the “1332 and 1464 Rentals of the Manors of Bishops Waltham”, translated from the Latin originals by Harold Barstow, that the mystery was solved. There in the list of tenants and their holdings for 1464 I found, “ISOLDA daughter of the late Andrew at Park”. I realised immediately that I had been missing the clue given by the word “formerly”. This is in fact always used in the documents – as standard legal usage – to refer to a previous owner. Isolda at Park had managed to survive centuries of intervening tenancies and continue to appear on the court’s description of the land ‑ a medieval landholder in a nineteenth century document.

Isolda’s name first appears on the list of 1332, although it was only added at some later and unspecified time when the list was updated. She is shown as having succeeded one Andrew le Thatchare to “one cottage in purpresture” ‑ that is, a cottage built by encroaching on a public road or track. By 1464, however, she had become a substantial landholder and is recorded as having four tenancies scattered throughout the southern part of the tithing of Curdridge, including one over the land now occupied by Tanglewood.

The medieval documents show that Isolda’s predecessors to the holdings were also at Parks. One tenancy was previously held by her father Andrew; the other three were previously held by one Peter at Park ‑ perhaps her uncle or her brother. Peter in turn had been preceded by Roger at Park in one case and by Robert at Park in another. The third holding appears to have been the one already mentioned above as having come from Andrew le Thatchare. One of Peter’s holdings had earlier been held by Thomas and Margaret at Park, as indeed had the holding Isolda presumably inherited from her father. By 1464, however, there are no other at Park’s listed as tenants not only in the tithing of Curdridge but anywhere on the Manor’s lands. The question is, where had the family gone?

The Black Death swept England in 1348‑49 and decimated whole villages. However, that would seem too early to explain why only Isolda seems to have remained by 1464 when there were clearly other at Parks alive in the intervening years. On the other hand, rates of mortality, particularly among mothers and infants, were high enough in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries irrespective of the plague and perhaps this is the reason not only for the absence of other at Parks but also why Isolda inherited from Peter at Park as well as her father, Andrew. Her name survived in the documents, I believe, because she was the first tenant to be written down and recorded in the court’s lists. This record therefore became part of the defining description of the holding as it passed from tenant to tenant across the centuries.

*

Curdridge and Curbridge – the same or different ?

          

                 Curdridge                                                       Curbridge

I have often wondered whether the two Curs in our parish[1] are the same or different. That is, are they of same etymological origin, or are they just an historical coincidence ?

The first thing I noticed when I began to explore this mystery is that the first edition of the Ordnance Survey 1 inch map of South Hampshire solved the problem by deciding that they were one and the same. According to the map there is no such place as Curdridge. Everything is labelled Curbridge – not only Curbridge itself, but also Curbridge Common (the fields from the top of Station Hill to Lockhams Road, Curdridge Lane and The Plantation) and Curbridge House (now Kitnocks House at the top of Kitnocks Hill). They should, of course, be Curdridge Common and Curdridge House. Either the surveyors got confused or maybe someone in the office decided that the surveyors had made a spelling mistake. Fortunately, this was all corrected in later editions.

The next thing I did was e-mail my friend, and local historian, David Chun. He has written a fine book on the history of the River Hamble and its surrounds so I thought I’d ask what he knew about Curdridge and Curbridge. He advised me that he had read that ‘place name interpretation is complex, and not something that an amateur should dabble in!’

However, he also referred me to ‘The Place-Names of Hampshire’ by Richard Coates (1989). He then pointed out that there was a copy available on Amazon for 79p. I bought it at once. The postage was a good bit more of course, but still, it was a good purchase: it answered my question.

Curdridge originates from an Anglo-Saxon name meaning Cuthred’s ridge. In other words, some chap called Cuthred ‘owned’ or had otherwise been granted possession of what we now know as the village of Curdridge, which lies – largely – on a ridge.

Curbridge, meanwhile, was variously known – or at least spelt –as Kernebrugge, Kerebrigge, Kernebregge and Cornebrigge. These names – or spellings – do not obviously have any connection to our man Cuthred. The common cur component in the two village names is, it would seem, a coincidence.

But then there is another mystery. Mr Coates is not at all sure what the meaning of Curbridgde’s Kerne, etc, might in fact be. He is convinced on historical-linguistic grounds that it comes from the Anglo-Saxon for quern – that is, the lower stone of a hand-driven grinding mill, once a common domestic item. He is then understandably unconvinced that anyone would try to build a bridge over a river with a collection of quern-stones. It is, he says, a question he prefers to leave open.

One possibility, of course, is that kern does not refer to – or describe – the bridge, but was, as it is now, the name of the river. But then why would you name a river after a grinding stone ?

My reluctant conclusion is that what David said is right and that this is not the sort of thing an amateur should dabble in.


Kevan Bundell

  1. The Parish is Curdridge, of which Curbridge is a hamlet.

Frog Mill or Paper Mill ?

Frog Mill or Paper Mill ?

A few months ago I mentioned in the Parish News that Frogmill Track – off Wangfield Lane – is so-called because it leads, by footpath, to the now derelict Frog Mill. This was a paper mill, not a corn mill. Rumour says that it used to make paper for Bank of England bank notes, or for the Morning Post newspaper. After my comment appeared I received a phone call from Miss Katherine Stone, formerly of `The Elms’, Outlands Lane, now living in Botley. She was keen to tell me that the correct name of the mill is Paper Mill, not Frog Mill. Her grandfather lived there and always called it by that name.

Here was a mystery. It is certainly known as Frog Mill, or Frogmill, nowadays, and is named as such on OS maps. But even within living memory it was also, it seems, known as Paper Mill. I immediately contacted Dennis Stokes of the Botley and Curdridge Local history Society to see if he could help solve the conundrum. He sent me a paper from the Society’s archives, researched and written by John Hammond , which tells the following story :

Just a quarter of a mile upstream from Frog/Paper Mill sits Durley Mill. In the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries this mill was owned by a family called Frogge. Furthermore the deeds of this mill called it `Frogmill’ right up to the 20th century. Our mill, meanwhile, was, from its earliest record, in 1648, `called a Papermill’ and it was not until 1738 that it is first referred to as Frog Mill. By 1834 it is clearly referred to as `a paper mill known as Frogmill’.

There was obviously some confusion over the centuries and the name Frog transferred from Durley Mill to the Paper Mill, despite the name Frogge remaining on the former’s deeds. John Hammond suggests that Durley Mill `was, no doubt, referred to generally by the name of whoever the owner at that time might be’. This would explain at least why it lost the Frog name over time, leaving the name free to float downstream.

By 1862 Paper Mill was, according to its deeds, `long since disused’, although people continued to live in its associated cottage. John Hammond reports that Jesse Bannell (who was Ms Stone’s Grandfather) and his family lived there from 1871 until at least 1891 and that Walter Henry Elliott and family lived there from 1901 until the 1920s. By 1938 the cottage was no longer occupied and by 1965 the building were all derelict.

It remains a minor mystery how it was that while everyone else followed the confusing of the names and mills, those who lived there still knew very well that the `correct’ name was in fact Paper Mill. We must thank Miss Stone for keeping this knowledge alive.

Kevan Bundell

11.08.15

Murder memorial stone at Botley Station

Behind the Victorian Fountain at the entrance to Botley Railway Station (so called – it is of course in Curdridge) there is a cast iron plaque mounted on cemented stones :

murder-memorial

It reads :

This Stone is Erected to Perpetuate a Most Cruel Murder Commited on the Body of Thomas Webb a Poor Inhabitant of Swanmore on the 11th of February 1800 By John Diggins a Private Soldier in the Talbot Fencibles Whose remains are Gibbited on the adjoining Common

The Talbot – or Tarbet – Fencibles were barracked in Botley at the time. Private Diggins, with two other soldiers, had come upon Thomas Webb, a poor and elderly pedlar, somewhere near Kings Corner (Pinkmead) in Curdridge. They not only robbed him of what few shillings he had, but then – according to a contemporary newspaper report – stabbed him, threw him in a ditch and stamped on him. Despite his injuries, Webb was able to crawl to a nearby cottage and get help – including the removal from his body of six inches of bayonet by a local surgeon. He was also able to tell what had happened – before he died. Diggins was found guilty of the murder at Winchester Assizes and sentenced to be hanged. The other two soldiers were acquitted for lack of evidence. Diggins was hanged in Winchester and his body then gibbited – that is, hung to rot – on Curdridge Common, between the main road to Shedfield and Outlands Lane. Thomas Webb was buried in St Peter’s Church graveyard, Bishops Waltham.

Meanwhile, the stone referred to on the plaque is not the cemented stones on which the plaque itself is mounted, but the undistinguished stone, without inscription, which sits half buried behind it. This suggests that the plaque was a later addition, Victorian perhaps, by when local history had became a subject of much interest.

All this can be found in more detail in local historian Dennis Stokes’ Botley and Curdridge – A history of two Hampshire villages, published by the Botley and Curdridge Local History Society (2007) – http://www.botley.com/history-society

I became curious about the plaque when I came upon the following:

Hampshire Treasures, Volume 1 ( Winchester City District), Page 82 – Curdridge

Memorial Stone Site of murder. Culprit hanged on local gibbet, cast iron plaque removed to Portsmouth City Museum.     SU 520 130
1904 27

(http://www.hants.gov.uk/hampshiretreasures/vol01/page082.html )

How can the plaque have been ‘removed’ to Portsmouth and yet still be present in Curdridge ?

I wrote to the Museum about it. Their reply was :

“The original plaque was donated to the Portsmouth City Museum before 1945 & is kept in storage there, although it has been used in a display at Southsea Castle. The plaque at Botley Station, therefore, must be a copy.”

Our plaque a copy ? Why, that practically makes it a forgery !

Or, perhaps, for some reason, two copies of the plaque were made at the same time? But why ?

History, it seems, is full of mystery . . .

Still, if anyone knows anything more about this matter, do let me know.

*
Another account of the murder can be found at : https://georgianera.wordpress.com/2015/04/21/the-gruesome-murder-of-thomas-webb-1800-curdridge-hampshire/

*

And yet another :

The Cruise of the Land-Yacht “Wanderer”; or Thirteen Hundred Miles In My Caravan, by William Gordon Stables, London 1892.
Extract from Chapter Twenty Seven.

Botley is one of the quietest, quaintest, and most unsophisticated wee villages ever the Wanderer rolled into . . . My attention was attracted to a large iron-lettered slab that hangs on the wall of the coffee-room of the Dolphin. The following is the inscription thereon:—

This Stone is Erected To Perpetuate a

Most Cruel Murder Committed on the Body

of Thos. Webb a Poor Inhabitant of Swanmore

on the 11th of Feb. 1800 by John Diggins

a Private Soldier in the Talbot Fencibles

Whose Remains are Gibbeted on the Adjoining Common.

And there doubtless John Diggins‟ body swung, and there his bones bleached and rattled till they fell asunder.

But the strange part of the story now has to be told; they had hanged the wrong man!

It is an ugly story altogether. Thus: two men (Fencibles) were drinking at a public-house, and going homewards late made a vow to murder the first man they met. Cruelly did they keep this vow, for an old man they encountered was at once put to the bayonet. Before going away from the body, however, the soldier who had done the deed managed to exchange bayonets with Diggins. The blood-stained instrument was therefore found in his scabbard, and he was tried and hanged. The real murderer confessed his crime twenty-one years afterwards, when on his deathbed.

So much for the Botley of long ago.

The iron slab, by the way, was found in the cellar of the Dolphin, and the flag of the Talbot Fencibles, strange to say, was found in the roof.

Curdridge myth and legend – Kitty Nocks and the Curdridge Witch.

This is an article I wrote for the ‘Curdridge Parish News’ in 2013 :

For such a small village, Curdridge has a wealth of myth and legend.  Many of you will know the stories of Kitty Nocks and of the Curdridge Witch, although they are often confused together.  The following versions of these tales are taken from various sources, including the archives of the Botley and Curdridge Local History Society.   I am grateful to Dennis Stokes for making these available to me. 

Kitty Nocks.    

Kitty Nocks- or Nox – lived in a big house surrounded by a moat at the top of Kitnocks Hill, perhaps where the present Kitnocks House now stands.  She had a suitor of whom her father disapproved so their meetings had to be in secret.  One day she was found to be missing.  A search was made and her body was discovered drowned in the moat.  It seems she had been trying to join her lover to elope with him, although another version of the story has it that she drowned herself in a nearby pond after her lover abandoned her.

 It was after this event that the hill came to be known as Kitnocks Hill, but quite when the event took place no one knows.  However, since then her ghost is said to have haunted the top of the hill.  Her most recent reported appearance was in 1978 when a lad got off the number 53 bus at Kitnocks Hill and was scared half to death to find himself accompanied by a ghost as he ran home to Gordon Road!  

The Curdridge Witch.

As I mentioned above, there is often confusion between Kitty Nocks and the Curdridge Witch, who is sometimes known as Kate Nocks – or Nox – and it is said that Kitnocks Hill is named after her.  However, what seems most likely is that the Witch was an elderly woman called Kate Hunt who lived, sometime in the 17th century, on Mill Hill, or thereabouts, near Pinkmead and the road to Botley.  There are a number of stories told about her.

One day some trees were being cut down and fell across her garden, making her very angry.  The next day the trees were found lying in the opposite direction, across the road.  She was also said to have ridden to Bishops Waltham and back on a field gate.   A servant girl used to travel regularly by horse taking milk and eggs to Bishops Waltham.  On her way she would deliver a pat of butter to Kate Hunt.  However, when the Witch repeatedly failed to pay, the girl was instructed to stop delivering to her.  Kate Hunt became furious and declared that the girl would get to Bishops Waltham quicker than she had ever done before.  The horse then set off at a gallop and didn’t stop until it reached ‘Clark’s Shop’, where the frightened girl found all her eggs broken and mixed up with the butter.

It was also believed that the Witch could turn herself into an animal, most frequently a large white hare.  It was decided that she could not be allowed to live.  The hare was tracked down and shot with a silver bullet – the only way to kill a witch. Kate Hunt was afterwards found at her home mortally wounded and she then died. 

There is also a ghost story associated with the Witch.   A lady riding in a carriage with friends near where Kate Hunt used to live saw a woman wearing a red cloak, but no one else saw her and it was agreed that such a cloak was an unusual sight.  However, it seems that many years before it had indeed been common for elderly women to wear red cloaks.

 Confusions.

The confusions between these two characters are not just in relation to their names and to the origin of the name of Kitnocks Hill.  One story is that people used to visit the grave of the Witch Kate Knox in a churchyard nearby Kitnocks Hill to seek her advice.   They would go alone at midnight and intone her name three times and then listen for her reply.  It seems clear that this practice must in fact have related to Kitty Nocks the drowned girl and not to the Witch.

There is also confusion as to the identity of the gargoyle on St Peter’s Church tower which faces towards Kitnocks Hill and shows a woman – not obviously old – with her face displaying great distress.  Some say this is the Witch, but surely it was intended to be Kitty Nocks – unless of course those who designed the tower in the 1880s were also confused !

Kitty Noakes.

There is a third tale, not so well known, concerning Kitnocks Hill.  Commander Richard Phillimore, born and brought up at Shedfield House a couple of miles from Kitnocks Hill, told me the following brief story, learnt when he was a boy I think in the early 1900s :

There was a servant girl called Kitty Noakes.  One night, on her way home from work, she was murdered on the hill by a footpad [i.e. a mugger] and robbed of her wages.

I have not found this story written down anywhere before, but if you have heard it, or something like it, I would very much like to know.  Indeed, if you know any other versions of or additions to these stories please contact me so that I can add them to the store of Curdridge myth and legend for future generations of Curdridge folk to enjoy.

*

Sources :

Winifred G., Christy, Elsa B., It happened in Hampshire,  Hampshire Federation of Women’s Institutes, Winchester, Fifth edition 1977,  p121  (This was first published in 1936).

Botley and Curdridge Local History Society archives, The Curdridge Witch (1693/1 – 3)and The Legend of Kitnocks (1693/4 – 5).  Taken from material collected by W S J Cooke.

“The Fairy Tale Has No Landlord”: On the Enchantments of Kitnocks Hill ( https://thegrammarofmatter.wordpress.com/the-enchantments-of-kitnocks-hill/ )

Moutray Read, D.H. 1911. Hampshire Folklore. Folklore Vol.22,No.3, p314.

Stevens, F.E. 1934. Hampshire Ways. London: Heath Cranton, p.51.

Summers, M. 1946. Witchcraft and Black Magic , London and New York: Rider and Co., p.192.

Kevan Bundell

kbundell@yahoo.co.uk      

 

You may  also like to listen to a song I wrote called Kitnocks Hill  which recounts the tales above :  track no. 8 from the album Bright Day :

 

 

 

Kitnocks – the origin of the name.

 

 

(This article appeared in the April 2014 edition of the Curdridge ‘Parish News’).

You may have seen my article ‘ Curdridge Myth and Legend –  Kitty Nocks and the Curdridge Witch’ published in the March 2013 edition of the ‘Parish News’.   (If not, it is available at www.kevanbundell.co.uk[1] ).   That article tried to sort out the common confusion between the two characters in question. 

This article is an attempt to go beyond the legends and explore the historical origin of the name Kitnocks.  So if you prefer myths and legends to historical ‘facts’, you should stop reading now !

*

Kitncoks Hill is a significant feature of the village of Curdridge.  Local knowledge has it that the name of the place derives from Kitty Nocks,  a young girl who lived and was drowned on the hill while attempting to elope with her lover.  Exactly when she lived  is not known.  The alternative explanation is  that the name comes from the so-called Curdridge Witch, but this seems unlikely as her name was probably Kate Hunt and she sems to have lived elsewhere in the village, sometime in the Seventeenth Century.   Folklore recorders and writers appear to have confused the two characters.

Here is what we know  about the name Kitnocks from documents held in the Hampshire Records Office :

  •          In a document called ‘Customs of the Hundred of South (i.e. Bishops) Waltham’, dated 1259/60 there is mention of a Thomas Kutenok.  The implication is that Thomas was a tenant in the Hundred (an administrative area of land).[2]
  •          In the Rentals of Bishops Waltham for 1332, a Richard de Cutenok is listed as the tenant of a ‘1/2 virgate’ of land.[3]
  •          In the Rentals of Bishops Waltham for 1464, under the heading ‘COURDRYGGE’,  we read  : ‘a messuage [house] and 1/2 a virgate of bond land called Kotenokes, formerly Richard de Cuttenoke’‘Formerly‘ here means  that Richard was a previous tenant.   This is the first reference to the land itself being known by a name.  Elsewhere in this document  we find references to ‘the land of Kutenokes’ and ‘formerly Kuttenokes’.

The spelling is all over the place, but it is clearly the same name that is being referred to.   In fact the letters  ‘c’ and  ‘k’ are interchangeable in Anglo Saxon, and the vowels could vary too.

  It seems clear that the name of the place that we have today has come down to us all the way from the name of the tenant family that held the land since at least  the Thirteenth Century. 

As for the name itself,  a little research reveals that ‘Cutte’ means ‘son of Cuthbert’ in Anglo Saxon,  and  that ‘Knock’ or ‘Nock’   is a shortened version of the phrase ‘atten oak’  or ‘at the oak’  (just as the name Noakes is ‘at the oaks’ or  Nash is ‘at the ashes’).   On the other hand it could be ‘atten nock’ , at a hill or knoll.

Be all that as it may,  if you have read this far and still prefer the legend of Kitty Nocks or the Curdridge Witch, you must not of course be swayed by my research.  Especially if you are in need of advice.  According to one Folklorist’s account it was customary to visit ‘Kit Knox Hill’ at midnight and to circle Kit Knox’s  grave three times,  ‘Then listen for the answer . . . council and guidance will always be given.’   I assume this custom has now died out, but do let me know if you know differently. I will then be sure to let whoever moves into the new houses just built on the top of the hill know – and tell them not to worry.

Kevan Bundell

 [1]https://kevanbundell.co.uk/2014/02/24/curdridge-myth-and-legend-kitty-nocks-and-the-curdridge-witch/

[2] Hampshire Records Office COPY/761/1

[3] 1332 & 1464  Rentals of Bishops Waltham Manors, Harold G Barstow, 1992.